Robotics

Big grocery chains are booming, and a large part of that is expanded rollout of delivery and online ordering. So how are small grocers staying alive during COVID-19?
A whopping 50% of consumers are now shopping online, which means local grocers, often competing in the same markets for the same customers as big chains, have had to reinvent their services. But developers and service-providers are easing the transition for local grocers, and a growing set of early adopters are now benefiting from robust and easy-to-implement as-a-service tools that extend the same kinds of online shopping and even robotic delivery options being developed by big chains to mom & pops, allowing them to sidestep steep service charges associated with third-party delivery apps. Don’t be surprised if the quaint market down the street soon has its own cloud-based inventory management, ordering, and robotic delivery suite.
The sector is growing and evolving quickly. Two players in the local end-to-end digital commerce game, Self Point, an inventory management and online ordering platform, and Tortoise, which makes teleoperated delivery carts for local delivery, recently announced a partnership to try and corner the local grocery market with contactless door-to-door delivery. It’s stunning to think that capability is now available to small grocers, who in many markets may actually succeed in outpacing big chains with online grocery offerings.
“We are thrilled to be able to serve our community in an innovative way using the Self Point and Tortoises’ solution,” says Mordi lalehzari, co-founder of Kosher Express. “The pandemic propelled us to move online and with the help of this unique offering, we efficiently rendered and executed an end-to-end solution that begins with placing an order online, continues with seamless fulfillment and ends with automated same-day delivery. We are thrilled to be able to provide our customers a simple and contactless shopping experience.”
Using Self Point’s platform, grocers build and manage their own catalogue of inventory and leverage advanced fulfilment methods online within hours. Grocers can then expand their offering to include Tortoises’ teleoperated electric delivery cart, which is remote-controlled can carry over 100 lbs. of goods in modular containers. The cart has a range of 3 miles at a max speed of 7MPH. Like other robotic delivery suites, such as Starship’s parcel and food delivery robot, the container is unlocked upon arrival and the customer and the store are notified of the completed delivery. 
“We are excited to enter into this collaboration with Self Point. Their advanced solution pairs perfectly with our remote-controlled carts as we share a common goal–to ensure grocers maintain control of their brand identity and customer loyalty,” says Dmitry Shevelenko, Co-Founder & President of Tortoise. “Self Point’s platform enables us to reach many local grocers, and we are thrilled to offer a safe, affordable and truly innovative way for people to receive their groceries. Together we guarantee that every touch point, from order to delivery, delights their consumers.”
We expect to see more point of sale and inventory management solutions merging or partnering with robotics developers as autonomous home delivery begins to take off in urban markets. More

Lidar, visual, acoustic, thermal: The battle of the sensors continues to rage among autonomous vehicle developers, and sensor development is pushing the technology forward while lowering prices and footprint. While the AV space is being watched closely, all that activity in the sensor market is opening new opportunities in adjacent spaces.
A good illustration comes in the form of two new traffic management system cameras built on sensing architecture developed for the autonomous vehicle space. FLIR Systems, which makes thermal sensors for a variety of applications, including automotive, recently announced a smart thermal imaging traffic camera, along with a visible spectrum camera, both with artificial intelligence to optimize traffic flow on roadways and at intersections. 
FLIR has been aggressive diversifying beyond the consumer automotive space. Last year, I wrote about FLIR’s acquisition of Endeavor Robotic Holdings, a military defense company specializing in ground robots, for a whopping $385 million. That acquisition came shortly after FLIR acquired aerial drone company Aeryon for $200 million, and just before the company announced it had made a strategic investment in DroneBase, a global drone operations company that provides businesses access to one of the largest Unmanned Aerial Surveillance (UAS) pilot networks.
Those acquisitions, like the smart traffic cameras, highlight an opportunistic strategy of identifying useful business cases for FLIR sensor deployments and moving aggressively into those spaces. Traffic sensing and optimizing relies on the same situational sensing capabilities used in autonomous driving, and FLIR is betting it can appeal to municipalities by offering to optimize traffic patterns and increase safety. The system is compatible with FLIR’s Acyclica cloud platform, which is already deployed in traffic management around the world. 
“FLIR traffic systems are currently installed in 75 countries, and with the addition of TrafiSense AI and TrafiCam AI, FLIR now offers a fully integrated solution that enables traffic engineers and city planners to apply AI-based learnings to continuously optimize traffic flow,” said Rickard Lindvall, General Manager, Solutions Business, FLIR Systems. “The integrated solution enables cities to improve urban roadway design to make cities safer and more livable.”
According to the company, the AI-enabled cameras offer real-time data capture and processing to provide input to traffic signal controllers at intersections, which improves traffic flow and safety in real time. With the ability to capture heat energy data through a thermal sensor and a visible low-light, high-definition sensor, FLIR boasts uninterrupted monitoring in all weather conditions. 
The cameras can also be used for vehicle-to-infrastructure deployments. Wi-Fi-enabled, the cameras could be used to communicate with in-car apps for travel time and road condition calculations.

FLIR will roll out the cameras globally in early 2021. More

One of the most promising implementations of retail automation has come to a screeching halt. Last week, news broke that mega-retailer Walmart was ending a lucrative contract with robotics firm Bossa Nova, which makes a shelf-scanning robot meant to streamline brick-and-mortar inventory management and bring new efficiencies to physical retailers in the age of ecommerce.
That narrative has now been disrupted in very public fashion, leaving the sector grappling.
Bossa Nova’s robots had been deployed in about 500 Walmart locations, with plans underway, after a successful pilot, for rollout to 1000 locations. That contract is now void, and the results have been predictably devastating for Bossa Nova, which has now reportedly laid off about half of its pre-cancellation workforce.
So what happened? Explanations from Walmart and Bossa Nova have been confined to vanilla statements.

“I cannot comment on Walmart,” Bossa Nova co-founder Sarjoun Skaff told The Verge in a prepared statement, “however, the pandemic has forced us to streamline our operations and focus on our core technologies. We have made stunning advances in AI and robotics. Our retail AI is the industry’s best and works as well on robots as with fixed cameras, and our hardware, autonomy and operations excelled in more than 500 of the world’s most challenging stores. With the board’s full support, we continue deploying this technology with our partners in retail and in other fields.”

What likely happened, as examined by the Wall Street Journal and others, is that the pandemic radically shifted priorities for Walmart, which no longer saw the value of autonomous shelf-scanning solutions while spikes in online ordering have left human employees with more free time. Through this lens, Walmart’s decision is more circumstantial than it is an indictment of the technology or company behind it.
Nevertheless, the industry was left reeling as the nation’s largest brick-and-mortar retailer reversed course on one of the clearest signals that automation was coming to brick-and-mortar retail a lot sooner than expected. Bossa Nova competitors, including Simbe Robotics, which makes a competing shelf-scanning unit, have been quick to do damage control and distance their technology from Bossa Nova’s lest they be caught in the fallout.
“Bossa Nova’s failure is not an indication of a lack of opportunity or necessity for retail robotics in the market,” Simbe CEO Brad Bogolea told me in an emailed statement. “Robotics solutions provide real-time shelf insights to assist store teams across three critical business insight areas: Out on Shelf, Pricing/Promo, and Product Location. Combined, these data points represent about $1T/year loss for retailers. This gap simply cannot be efficiently solved by human workers because it requires counting tens of thousands of items per store, multiple times per day; it’s not feasible from an operations standpoint. This real-time information is critical to retailers’ business and ultimately, their bottom line.”

A Simbe spokesman pointed out to me that with the company’s robot robot Tally, stores have seen a 20% reduction in out-of-stocks and a 2.2% uptick in annual sales, and partners like Schnuck Markets are moving to expand their use of this tech quickly. It’s important to understand, too, that shelf scanning robots are capable of doing a lot more than checking for out-of-stock items.
“Accurate real-time shelf insights encompass more than just out of stocks,” explains Bogolea, “equally as important from an ROI perspective are accurate pricing and promotion execution (i.e. quickly correcting mispriced products) and product location information. Retail robotics solutions like Tally fill this gap incredibly efficiently and effectively and help recoup a massive hole in revenue by arming retailers with the data needed to optimize products on shelf.”
In the end, Walmart’s divorce from Bossa Nova may say more about a specific company grappling with a specific moment in history than it does about the future of robotics in retail. 
Says Bogolea: “The future of retail robotics is exciting, and it’s just getting started.” More

Time and again, biological-inspired design proves the secret to unlocking the potential of manmade creations. That fact is reinforced in a next-gen drone inspired by the wing and tail shape of birds of prey, as well as flight behavior.
The resulting drone, modeled after the northern goshawk, flies with heretofore unseen agility for a drone thanks to careful coordination of its flight surfaces. It was developed by scientists of the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems of EPFL led by Dario Floreano.
“Goshawks move their wings and tails in tandem to carry out the desired motion, whether it is rapid changes of direction when hunting in forests, fast flight when chasing prey in the open terrain, or when efficiently gliding to save energy,” says Enrico Ajanic, the first author and PhD student in Floreano’s lab. Floreano adds: “our design extracts principles of avian agile flight to create a drone that can approximate the flight performance of raptors, but also tests the biological hypothesis that a morphing tail plays an important role in achieving faster turns, decelerations, and even slow flight.”
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The bird-inspired design is a further evolution of a drone the team created in 2016, this one adding the extensible tail and wings. Floreano has also done work on other bio-inspired drones, including a tug drone inspired by wasps, which we covered in 2018.
“It was fairly complicated to design and build these mechanisms, but we were able to improve the wing so that it behaves more like that of a goshawk,” says Ajanic. “Now that the drone includes a feathered tail that morphs in synergy with the wing, it delivers unparalleled agility.” 
Much like an airplane can extend its flaps, birds change the shape of their wings and tail to increase or reduce air resistance and change lift coefficients. The bird-inspired drone is capable of flying much slower than traditional fixed wing drones, but it can also optimize its wing shape to fly much faster. 
Interestingly, the use of a propeller instead of a bird’s flapping motion actually makes the drone more efficient as a flying unit than a bird, whose wings have to pull double duty. The result is a drone that’s much faster than most fixed-wing drones but provides agility that puts it in the class of quadcopters, which are incredibly nimble but not nearly as fast as fixed-wing aircraft. Quadcopters also suffer from reduced flight time due to energy consumption. 

“The drone we just developed is somewhere in the middle. It can fly for a long time yet is almost as agile as quadrotors,” says Floreano. This combination of features is especially useful for flying in forests or in cities between buildings, as it can be necessary during rescue operation. The project is part of the Rescue Robotics Grand Challenge of NCCR Robotics.
One drawback of the new drone is that it takes an incredible amount of skill to operate successfully. As any novice fixed-wing drone operator can testify, it’s hard work keeping a conventional fixed-wing aircraft in flight, particularly if conditions are optimal. This drone adds several layers of complexity that make manual flight impractical for most pilots.
However, the additional of AI and semi-autonomy to the flight controls should drastically lower the bar, making future drones that use this design practical for a wide range of pilots. Possible uses include search and rescue, rogue drone pursuit, and law enforcement, to name a few. The team’s research appears in Science Robotics. More

For the fourth straight year, a survey by IEEE presents a snapshot of how the newest generation of parents, whose kids belong to Generation Alpha, think of artificial intelligence and other technologies in relation to their children’s health and wellness. This year’s survey takes on special relevance given the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and shifting attitudes about technology and automation across demographics.
The study surveyed parents in the U.S., U.K., India, China and Brazil with Generation Alpha children (11 years old or younger). Generation Alpha is considered the most tech-exposed in history, and parents and children’s wellness experts are watching closely to see what effects that exposure might have.
The pandemic brings new relevance to the annual survey. Technologies that were still largely in development or limited rollout a year ago are now becoming commonplace, including self-driving cleaning robots and automation in areas like fast food and delivery.
A majority of those surveyed globally (89%) have some degree of confidence in cleaning robots, with 44% having complete trust. Similarly, most millennial parents (82%) believe in sensor technology to monitor the flow of people and help reinforce social distancing. That points to broad acceptance among younger parents of sensors designed to monitor human activity, which should raise eyebrows among security advocates. Nonetheless, the majority of those surveyed (71%) would not visit movie theaters until there is widespread distribution of an effective vaccine.
How do millennial parents feel about other technologies that will influence the health and wellness of themselves and their kids?
Last year, a majority of parents (U.S.: 52%; U.K.: 60%; Brazil: 75%; India: 92%; China: 94%) would be very comfortable allowing a properly tested and fully functional 3D printed heart to be implanted in their child if needed in the future. Many parents surveyed went further, expressing that they would be “extremely” comfortable allowing a 3D printed heart to be implanted in their child (India: 58%; China: 50%; Brazil: 42%). 
Confidence is at least as high this year, with nearly two in three (63%) Millennial parents globally saying they are very comfortable with allowing a properly tested/fully functional 3D printed heart to be implanted in their child if needed. Only 11% globally say they would not be comfortable with a printed functional printed heart in their child. Notably, in the U.S. that number is higher, with 23% expressing discomfort at the idea.

Parents surveyed were also generally comfortable with robots powered by artificial intelligence operating on their children. Globally, 29% were very likely to allow robots to conduct surgery on their kids and 31% were likely to allow robots powered by AI to conduct surgery on their child. China was the most receptive country to the technology among the demographics surveyed, with 63% of respondents extremely and 26% likely to allow robotic surgery on their child. By contrast, American respondents were more conservative, with 41% saying they would not be likely at all to allow it. 
Given how the pandemic has upended childcare routines and thrown work-life balances far out of whack for those who can’t afford round-the-clock care, it’s not surprising that millennial parents looked favorably on technologies that could ease their childcare duties. Self-driving school buses, which are currently being tested around the world, seem to be popular with millennial parents, with 58% globally extremely or very likely to allow their child to take such transportation to minimize their stress, if tested as safe and staffed by a caretaker robot.
Similarly, 66% of parents globally agree they would adopt a robot nanny to take care of their children while working remotely from home, according to IEEE, with a full 54% agreeing that having a robot to help kids do their homework would alleviate a significant amount of their COVID-19-related stress.
Nevertheless, there are limits to faith in robots, it seems. Would parents leave their children home alone with a robot nanny? Depends where you live. Only 37% of American parents surveyed would. But in India that number is a whopping 76%, and in China 80% agree would hand over their kiddos to a robot nanny.
As a parent of two kids under five, my personal tolerance for the idea vacillates pretty widely throughout a given day. For now, at least, I’m pining for big fields for the kids to run in more than for technology to save the day.

Coronavirus More

So you’ve sent a payload to the moon. How, exactly will you unload it?
No really … NASA is asking. How?!
That question undergirds a new lunar delivery competition, open to the public, from the NASA Tournament Lab and NASA’s https://www.nasa.gov/langley. In conjunction with the vaunted Artemis program, which seeks to land the first woman and the next man on the surface of the moon in 2024 in advance of establishing a sustained human presence on the moon, the competition seeks to solve a tricky problem: Unloading supplies that arrive from earth.
The quotidian nature of the problem underscores the difficulties of working in space, where even seemingly straightforward problems are incredibly difficult, even life threatening. In the next decade, NASA believes it will be continuously sending payloads to the lunar surface, which means it has to figure out its logistics game across a variety of cargo types. Rovers and building materials need to be shipped, and so do small instruments and delicate materials. What’s the best system to handle it all to ensure door-to-door delivery across tens of thousands of miles?
“We are looking for broad concepts from the public, so this is not an engineer-specific challenge. We want to hear from everyone,” says Paul Kessler, Aerospace Vehicle Design and Mission Analyst, NASA. “We are interested in concepts that range from simple to complex. We don’t yet know what will work best, and that’s why we’re interested in every proposal. We are excited to see what people have to offer and to have them contribute to NASA’s ambitious mission. This is the stuff that makes history.”
The competition is being run in coordination with HeroX, which bills itself a social network for innovation and the world’s leading platform for crowdsourced solutions.
“Replicating our everyday activities on the Moon continues to be a challenge. Finding ways to do these things in a lunar environment is crucial to the success of a sustained human presence on the Moon,” says Christian Cotichini, CEO, HeroX. “The unloading of payloads is a critical part of that overall effort. NASA hopes it can once again leverage the brilliance of the crowd so that astronauts have access to the equipment and supplies they need.”
The competition will award up to six participants a total prize purse of $25,000, plus the chance to directly influence space logistics during a crucial age of space exploration. More

It’s a sci-fi trope and a technology that’s been seriously explored for space exploration, but so far 3d-printed food is little more than a novelty. A company whose founder has deep roots in 3d printing is setting out to change that with a bolt-on kit that converts home 3d printers with food-grade equipment to create food.
Cakewalk3d was founded by Marine Coré-Baillais, former director of 3d printing company Sculpteo. The project began with a question: What if 3d printers could do more? In 2019, 1.4 million 3d printers sold in 2019 worldwide, which creates an alluring hardware base for an add-on technology. 
So what kind of food will Cakewalk3d’s technology enable the masses to print? Cake, of course. And what better way to appeal to bored makers looking for new ways to use their printers?

Cakewalk3d offers a food-grade extruder that fits directly on many popular 3d printers. Support parts to attach the extruder can be printed on any standard printer with accompanying CAD files. 
Culinary-grade printers do exist, but they’re largely confined to commercial kitchens or the province of DIY tinkerers. Cakewalk3d democratizes 3d-printed dessert technology. About a hundred models exist in the company’s library, which enables users to create various flavor profiles and cake structures, including sweet, salty, and vegan preparations. 
The project is launching on Kickstarter, with deliveries starting in December 2020. The ready-to-use kit (extruder, motor parts, 3d printed support parts) costs about $150 USD.
The company is positioning the product for amateur and professional home chefs and cake designers as a way to accelerate design and creation. It could also impact the way recipes and techniques are traded and iterated. Much as open source libraries enable mass distribution of 3d printing plans, Cakewalk3d may succeed in creating a techie community of cake designers who push the art and science of desserts forward. More

After a successful pilot program to test a robotic fry cook this summer, White Castle will expand the automated cook concept by ten times. The pilot, which began this summer, and the newly announced expansion both come as COVID-19 shakes up the restaurant industry and drives new automation technologies to increase efficiencies and sanitation.
The robot, which we’ve covered since it came out of stealth, is built by Miso Robotics. It’s called Flippy, Robot-on-a-Rail (ROAR), which is an update to an earlier autonomous fry cook concept. During the pandemic, a huge market opportunity has emerged for automation in food preparation. Flippy can reduce human contact with food during the cooking process while bringing fast food concepts an innovative quality control system built atop sensors and intelligent monitoring, which can anticipate kitchen needs to keep food temperatures consistent. White Castle, which bills itself as the first hamburger fast food chain in country, will be bringing the newest version of Flippy, Robot-on-a-Rail (ROAR), to an additional 10 kitchens.
“Artificial intelligence and automation have been an area White Castle has wanted to experiment with to optimize our operations and provide a better work environment for our team members,” said Lisa Ingram, CEO of White Castle. “We believe technology like Flippy ROAR can improve customer service and kitchen operation.  This pilot is putting us on that path – and we couldn’t be more pleased to continue our work with Miso Robotics and pave the way for greater adoption of cutting-edge technology in the fast-food industry.”
One of the big advantages of Flippy ROAR for a 24-7 restaurant is that it’s able to optimize staffing during late night shifts, which are tough slots to staff reliably. In 2020, the technology also facilitates social distancing at work by removing one or more staff members normally assigned to the grill. Of course, both Miso Robotics and White Castle downplay the potential reduction of staff, focusing instead on how existing workers are able to focus on front-of-the-house needs, as well as order fulfillment for delivery and takeout. And in fairness, the pandemic has made safe staffing difficult, so there’s a good argument that an automation implementation like this actually helps keep stores open and workers working.
The system is as much an operations management platform as a cooking robot. Production speeds can be monitored to maximize efficiency and reduce wait times, and the robot can cook an average of 360 baskets of fried foods a day.
“We have been so excited to work closely with White Castle to optimize Flippy ROAR to meet the needs of their kitchen for increased production, team member optimization and quality assurance,” said Buck Jordan, Chairman & President of Miso Robotics. “Our platform has become increasingly powerful and intelligent – allowing us to quickly scale, integrate into operations and show our ability to help keep customer service standards on par with White Castle’s industry reputation of excellence. As we move into the next phase of our partnership, we look forward to accelerating our results and delivering even greater value across White Castle locations.” More